Region rallies to provide NHS with life-saving equipment

Watch Rebecca Haworth's report

From ventilators to visors - our region is helping to supply vital resources to protect both frontline NHS staff and patients.

Brackley-based Mercedes has put aside traditional rivalries and joined forces with other F1 teams like Milton Keynes' Red Bull and manufacturers - to produce a breathing aid called a CPAP that can help keep infected patients out of intensive care.

The device gets oxygen to the lungs without needing invasive treatment.

Elsewhere schools have also been donating supplies.

A number of schools are also getting involved like Samuel Whitbread Academy in Bedfordshire. They've donated 350 lab goggles to Luton and Dunstable Hospital, as well as the local ambulance service.

Charlotte Linehan, Vice Principal Samuel Whitbread Academy: "They don't want any goggles with elastic, so they had to be fully hardened plastic, such as these, because they felt they couldn't necessarily clean the elastic to the appropriate standard. So we're hoping that these will be you know invaluable, and really useful."

A company in Peterborough which makes medical gloves is now shipping its entire stock of more than 88 million to the NHS.

Iain Crawford, Group Managing Director, Supermax Healthcare: "Tough decision for us because we have almost 700 customers of which the NHS is only one, so any decision we made with this stock was going to impact everybody. But in other ways it was the easiest decision we ever made because our frontline medical staff need our support and help now more than ever and this was just the only way we felt that we could do it."

In Cambridge, a community group called MakeSpace is producing visors for Addenbrooke's Hospital.

Meanwhile a logistics centre has been set up by the University of Cambridge to co-ordinate donations of personal protective equipment.